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Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

cnbc.com

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Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#581

Post by dsabanin »

magnetic wrote: post #535
twayalways wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone's reaction to this seems to be "He is crazy / paranoid". He also investigated "sabotage" when a SpaceX rocket exploded in 2016. > or a competing manufacturer, or an oil / gas company finally picking things up after a terrible oil price collapse This is borderline ridiculous. Are you really convinced that Tesla is on the verge of upending the entire energy world? That any minute now they are going to put Bi…

> Outside of the coastal elites or tech junkies, Tesla is practically unknown and is a rounding error to competitors. Tesla outsells BMW, Audi and Mercedes' flagships in their home market - https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-outsells-bmw-audi-m... Tesla Model 3 Outsells BMW, Mercedes Equivalents in California - The Model 3 is the best selling mid-size premium sedan sold in California in the first quarter. - htt…

And, of course, BMW and Mercedes are simply incapable of competing with Tesla on quality engineering and streamlined manufacturing processes, so the only option they have left is sabotage.

It is very hard to connect electric motors to laptop battery packs and to replace the dashboard with an android tablet.

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#582

Post by abc_lisper »

Fins wrote: post #580
abc_lisper wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard this defense before. It's the same as saying Mac is just a computer and iPhone is just a phone.

"Defense" seems to be a strange choice of word here. And seriously, iPhone isn't just a phone, seriously?

Yeah, defense as in defending an argument.

> And seriously, iPhone isn't just a phone, seriously?

Not sure how old you are, but if you want just a phone look at feature phones, seriously ;)

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#583

Post by mcv »

pwinnski wrote: post #151
rplst8 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, as far as I'm concerned, the argument "you sound like a conspiracy theorist" doesn't hold water any more.

Is the logic here that because some conspiracy theories have turned out to be true, all conspiracy theories are likely true? That seems... unwise.

There's a big difference between crazy conspiracy theories, like the moon hoax and stuff like that, and actual conspiracies, which can still exist, whether anyone theorises about them or not.

For example, to me it's pretty clear that Putin is trying to destabilise the West. This is a theory about a conspiracy, but it's supported by plenty of evidence from multiple sources, and it makes sense, because Putin really hates NATO. But there's no credible evidence that the moon landing was a hoax, and the theory is insane, because the USSR would have had to be in on the hoax and help the US defeat them in the space race.

So what about Tesla? Are there people and organisations that have reason to feel threatened by Tesla? Is there evidence that they're trying to sabotage Tesla? And are these cases unconnected or is there actual coordination? (Otherwise it's still not a conspiracy.)

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#584

Post by mcv »

glenneroo wrote: post #575
arcticfox wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then you'd come back from lunch and find the mantrap doors propped open, or someone left a workstation unlocked with root access to something important, or random guests just wandering around. It's a miracle we never were compromised by a disgruntled employee (of which there were many). Maybe not the most technical solution to this, but one of my previous employers had a workplace culture of setting the desktop bac…

We used to do this at LAN parties in the 90s... of course goatse was the preferred background. People quickly learned never to leave their seats for more than 30 seconds. Most people would just do a 5-10 minute power-nap in their chairs.

Why not simply lock the screen?

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#585

Post by mcv »

dkbrk wrote: post #327
acjacobson wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shorts in volume should do the opposite and act as a drag on the price because they represent shares sold today vs. in the future. That creates downward pressure on demand as the more people who sell today, fewer remain who are willing to buy at the same price.

That may be the case when the short volume is increasing, but at this point, with the stock price rising, traders should be looking to exit their short position. If anything, with such a large volume short, a short squeeze is a serious likelihood in the near future.

I've been thinking the same thing. A short may be a sell, but it's also a guarantee that someone is going to buy in the future.

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#586

Post by cepth »

gamblor956 wrote: post #541
adwn wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they could simply buy up its outstanding debt and call it in They could try to buy it up, and they might succeed, but they can't call in the debt willy-nilly before it matures.

Have participated in corporate debt structuring before. Standard terms allow for debtholders to call in a debt before it matures if they have reason to believe the debtor will be unable to pay back the loan at the end of the term. With Tesla's long-standing liquidity concerns, it would be absolutely shocking (and could even constitute legal malpractice for the debtors' lawyers) if the debtors didn't have the right to…

From a recent WSJ article on Tesla’s debt: https://www.wsj.com/articles/sizing-up-teslas-10-billion-deb....

If you look at the charts they provide, nearly half of Tesla’s own and SolarCity-inherited debt is in the form of convertible bonds. To the best of my knowledge, convertible bonds trade off debt seniority for the potential upside of an equity vehicle.

It seems that the rest of their debt is in the form of “vanilla” long term bonds. Very little comes from a revolving credit facility or other short term bank financing.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no such thing as a call provision exercisable by a bond holder. This would seem to defeat the entire purpose of issuing a bond from the issuer’s perspective in the first place; namely, access to capital for a finite amount of time in exchange for a fixed interest payment. Some bonds are certainly callable by the original issuer, at a premium to market price, but I struggle to think of a single publicly traded bond that gives the kinds of debt covenant style call provisions that you’re referring to.

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#587

Post by justinclift »

dagw wrote: post #444
dpcx wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested to know how you plan to keep someone with `wheel` access from doing anything on a server that they maintain. No, seriously.

Only allow the server to run signed code and make sure that no one with wheel access has access to the signing key.

Well, the email specifically mentioned the employee had used other user accounts.

Depending on what those "other user accounts" had access to, it could go in many different directions. :)

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#588

Post by mcv »

ballenf wrote: post #509
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would they dig deep? Whenever an outsized high-risk position pays off, multiple regulators--at the SRO, state and federal levels--investigate. Mostly for insider trading. Sometimes in response to investor complaints or broker arbitration proceedings. These are well-paid professionals at the SEC, CFTC, FINRA, state financial services regulators, Federal Reserve, OCC, Treasury, and a bajillion other acronym agenc…

Would sabotage qualify as insider trading? Has it happened before?

On some level I find it odd if the insider trading turns out to be the worst part of sabotage.

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#589

Post by justinclift »

jrs95 wrote: post #434
alxlaz wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously, not all details are available, but the wording in the email suggests that the parent comment is anything but naive: > This included making direct code changes to the Tesla Manufacturing Operating System under false usernames and exporting large amounts of highly sensitive Tesla data to unknown third parties. This sounds like something out of the 1990s, that dark and romantic era of version control when we…

Sounds like he gained the ability to create users, so he probably used that to get around any automated code review process as well.

Hmmm, it sounded to me more like the person had gained access to other employee's credentials. eg usernames/passwords or similar.

Re: Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee

#590

Post by cepth »

dsabanin wrote: post #581
magnetic wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Outside of the coastal elites or tech junkies, Tesla is practically unknown and is a rounding error to competitors. Tesla outsells BMW, Audi and Mercedes' flagships in their home market - https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-outsells-bmw-audi-m... Tesla Model 3 Outsells BMW, Mercedes Equivalents in California - The Model 3 is the best selling mid-size premium sedan sold in California in the first quarter. - htt…

And, of course, BMW and Mercedes are simply incapable of competing with Tesla on quality engineering and streamlined manufacturing processes, so the only option they have left is sabotage. It is very hard to connect electric motors to laptop battery packs and to replace the dashboard with an android tablet.

Wouldn’t you say this is a little glib?

Nissan’s LEAF famously struggled with battery degradation over time.

You can shade Tesla’s execution/financial performance/etc., but the battery technology improvements they’ve made are real. They’re going to be the first battery manufacturer to deliver costs of lower than $100/kWh, not to mention effectively doubling global production of lithium ion batteries.

A BMW is my most driven car, and I’ve test driven the i3, but it’s quite glib to suggest that BMW and Mercedes could come out with an electric car at any point in time. Tesla’s batteries have degradation performance like this: https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/tesla-batteries-last-long.... BMW only offers a warranty on the i3 battery to 80% capacity after 100k miles.

One last thing: clean infotainment software is not a given. BMW iDrive was terrible until 2016. The Mercedes interface is still ugly. Neither maker has touchscreens standard.

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